


Some of Them Want to Use You

by ceann_cinnidh



Series: I Travelled the World (And the Seven Seas) [2]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV), The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, M/M, Minor Character Death, The Hilltop (Walking Dead), Unexpected Johnny Cash Music (I am sorry but not sorry enough)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-16
Updated: 2017-11-16
Packaged: 2019-02-03 08:58:41
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,659
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12745143
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ceann_cinnidh/pseuds/ceann_cinnidh
Summary: Derek Hale had lost everything - the end of the world only proved that.





	Some of Them Want to Use You

**Author's Note:**

> After having such a positive response to the first part in this series, Everybody's Looking For Something, I decided to write a follow up which is from Derek's point of view instead of Stiles'. I wasn't planning to, but all you lovely reviewers got to me so here we are.  
> You can read this as a standalone fic, but it might read better in the context of the series.  
> Enjoy

Derek spoke Spanish the way he spoke English – disdainfully. He hated the humidity, he hated the unfamiliarity, he hated the _vibe_. Cora liked it though. Where ever she was in this slow roasting hell pot, she enjoyed it. Derek hadn’t wanted to stay in South America, but the longer it took to find Cora the more he became convinced that she wouldn’t come back to the States with him – thus he had begrudgingly made peace with the fact that this could be ‘the vibe’ he would have to live with for the rest of his miserable life.

 

Dead.

Cora was dead.

She couldn’t be dead, he had just found her.

Her throat had been ripped out by something that smelt like death. No wolf, no kanima, no nogitsune – just the lingering scent of rot permeating the air around her corpse, infesting the bloodied flesh of her neck. Derek had sat with her limp body in his arms for three days in her neighbour’s basement before truly acknowledging that she was gone.

This was all the universe had in store for him. This endless slog of torture, ripping away all that it had once given him just to see him cry.

Maybe it wasn’t the universe; maybe it was Derek. Maybe the universe wasn’t spiting him, maybe he was spiting the universe. Destroying every delicate beauty it created, simply because he wanted to touch it, wanted to hold it, wanted to feel something for himself. That had to be it.

 

Derek sat on the roof. He liked rooves. Not for any whimsical hippy ‘headspace’ reason Stiles might come up with, but because it was dangerous. Unpredictable. The thought that he could slip and fall to his death made him feel a violent course of adrenaline and jolted his nerve endings into life once more – it was revitalising. He could fall and hit his head, or he could fall and break his neck, but the most invigorating thought was that he could fall into the waiting arms of the starving corpses below. It was thrilling. It made Derek remember he _was alive_ and _he was a person_ and he had the power to do _whatever the fuck he wanted_.

Right now, whatever the fuck he wanted, was a fast car, a leather jacket, and a bottle of something laced with wolfs-bane.

The thought crossed his mind before he remembered with a painful clench – he didn’t need the wolfs-bane to get drunk now. He wasn’t Alpha Hale anymore, wasn’t Beta Derek, wasn’t even Omega Bitch. He was just a person. Peter had figured it out and told him before the phone lines went down, and it was the only explanation that made sense; the sickness was in the air and it killed your wolf. Made you human. Made you vulnerable and weak and pathetic. That was why Cora was dead, she was made vulnerable and he was made weak and neither of them could protect her from the walking corpses.

 

His bottle of something-that-wasn’t-laced-with-wolfs-bane made it three miles down the road. His leather jacket made it until the midday heatwave. His fast car made it to Mexico until he couldn’t find any more gas. There, he ran into what was left of the Calaveras and their matriarch, looking for less populated areas to set up camp.

Wolf, she said.

Hunter, he said.

Allies, they agreed.

The world wasn’t what it was anymore, there were no more werewolves and hunters, no more druids and emissaries, only the divide between the living and the dead. A song from long ago surfaced to his mind as he watched a beaded rosary fall from someone’s pocket into the sand as they cleared him a space in their van – a song he might have once had an opinion on, some goth country trash Laura fell in love with.

_Your own, personal, Jesus. Someone to hear your prayers, someone who cares._

He looked down at the rosary blankly, picking it from the dirt and handing it back to the hunter. No one had a personal Jesus anymore. There wasn’t even a generic Jesus to turn to. Who was he to give a damn if some idiot believed that there was? So Derek found himself in the back of the Calaveras van next to people who were once his enemies, driving out into the desert where they might be safe from the bodies of the people they loved, his sister singing songs of dead gods in his mind.

 

He didn’t know how long it had been since the Calaveras had tried to kill him (why did the scorpion sting the frog, Derek Hale?) but he did know how long it had been since they had banished him after he killed his would be murderers – fucking long. He thought he’d die out in the desert, shoes scuffed to the soles, throat raw and eyes dry, he thought he’d die _human_. No offence to Stiles.

But it would appear there was still a little of his wolf there, a little of his wolf keeping him alive; the parts of him that could fight with his bare knuckles and go for weeks without nourishment, those parts were the wolf. The parts of him that made him keep on moving, that was the wolf. When his mind shut down and he could only think of one foot in front of the other, that was the wolf too.

The sheer _will_ was all him. Will to see Beacon Hills again, will to see- to see who? His pack? They were not his pack, they were not even his friends. To see his family? They all shared a tall gravestone in the cemetery despite being ashes in the forest. To see his home? Beacon Hills was never his home. The only home he had known was burnt out to a husk by a woman he’d been manipulated to love.

To see Stiles? He wasn’t with Stiles, never had been. Maybe in another life, in another time, where Derek wasn’t a liability or a flight risk or an emotionally stunted ass, but in the real where world where he was all of those things, Stiles was Stiles and Derek was Derek and they would never be Stiles and Derek. He didn’t care about Stiles and Stiles didn’t care about him. Whatever this emotion was, it was nothing more than concern for the McCall Pack’s only human.

He didn’t want to go to Beacon Hills to see his dead family and his not-friends and his whatever Stilinski was, but it seemed the only thing to do. Maybe that desire was just his wolf, seeking familiar territory. He had never been more of a wolf and less of a wolf all at once before. He missed it, being at one with his inner beast. It was like a ghost haunting him, a phantom limb he could feel but not move. Derek missed the wild. Derek missed his wolf. And if he was being completely honest with himself, he missed Stiles.

 

One of the many things Derek missed about being a werewolf, was the natural sense of direction. He couldn’t be sure he was even heading in the general direction of California, what with all the Mexican towns he’d never heard of being his only markers for direction. Suddenly, Derek found himself sympathising with Stilinski – being human was hard.

He couldn’t growl anymore either. It just sort of came out as a low rumble at the back of his throat, something pathetic that wasn’t even remotely scary let alone the bone chilling calling card of the apex predator he was used to.

He couldn’t sense things as well as he used to either, like someone had thrown a dozen blankets over him and he was feeling around in the dark. Derek no longer knew when something was nearby he could only look out for it, could only listen intently for it. His hearing – also shockingly dull.

That meant that he couldn’t tell when people were lying to him, he couldn’t listen out for the tell-tale rabbiting of their heartbeats. He had to rely on his judge of character.

(Derek didn’t have a good judge of character.)

The only positive his numb senses provided, was that he couldn’t smell the dead. Anytime he managed to come across a herd he’d think for a moment yes, yes, his senses were returning he could smell them, before realising that no, they just smelt that awful.

 

It would appear his sense of direction was worse than he’d thought.

This was not Derek’s fault, except for how it was, and Georgia was almost as hot as god damn Mexico and he hated the heat, he just wanted to be in his nice damp forest in northern California and broodily look out into the rain and lurk around derelict buildings and abandoned depots and maybe even get arrested again because last time he got to flirt with the cute new deputy and he wondered briefly how that cute deputy was doing and if that cute deputy was even still alive and he could not think that because then he’d think about the rest of them and how even though they weren’t all friends they were all each other’s people, the ones others associated you with, and that meant they sort of cared about what happened to each other and they were probably all long dead by now anyway and Derek was alone again.

For the first time in a long time, Derek Hale cried.

Crying, yelling, and screaming a guttural visceral scream that drew the dead to the abandoned store front. They banged on the windows and scratched against the walls, setting the pace for Laura’s stupid song to tick its way back into his head, the soundtrack of his torture both then and now.

_-Feeling unknown-_

He stomped his tired feet against the tiled floor, feeling the shock jolting through his bones and Derek wondered maybe if he kicked his feet hard enough he could break them.

_-And you’re all alone-_

He threw one of the cans that had rolled near him away, towards the window. The sharp clunk as it landed indicated it had hit the glass, maybe even cracked it, only riling up his audience even more.

_-Flesh and bone-_

His feet were under him all of a sudden and Derek was throwing himself against the metal shelf, knocking away whatever remained standing there so violently that his pathetic human arms were sure to bruise. Tears streamed down his face and he screamed kicking back the shelf when there was nothing left on it to throw.

_-By the telephone-_

Derek pitched himself towards a door labelled ‘staff only’ thumping his palms against it before managing to form a real fist. He beat it. He pummelled it. Thwack, thump, thwack, the way Laura had taught him, the way he had taught Cora. The wood was splintering like the bones in his hands but Derek didn’t stop, not even when the blood starting pouring from the splits across his knuckles. Thwack, thump, thwack. One final heavy kick and the door gave way. It was the door to the garage of this family owned shop. He must be dead because good things did not happen to Derek Hale, yet there it was behind the door. A car. A car with keys, and a full tank of gas.

_-Lift up the receiver, I’ll make you a believer-_

 

He saw it on a signpost. ‘New York’. It belted him across the face like Laura herself had punched him with her wicked left hook. He missed New York. Missed Laura. Missed how Laura was in New York, wild and free and able to breathe. She’d know what to do, if only she was here: she’d tell him to pull himself together, shave the feral animal off of his face and get his ass to Beacon Hills. But he couldn’t because if he went there, he’d know for certain what had become of his- His _people_. His not-friends. So he drove towards New York, simply because it wasn’t Beacon Hills.

 

He met Paul Rovia in Virginia. The asshole had tried to steal his car. It didn’t matter that Derek had stolen the car in the first place, but it was the principle of the thing. It was a really nice car. When Derek had used his residual wolf strength to throw the guy, he’d bounced back like it had barely been a bump. He suspected the guy had been a something before the end of the world, a werewolf or a coyote or a something because no way was a guy like that human.

He didn’t know how long they fought for before they reached an impasse.

“What’s your name?”

“Derek Hale.”

“I’m Paul Rovia, but my friends call me Jesus.”

 

They sat side by side under the overhang of the petrol station, sharing a stale bag of popcorn, watching a group of crows peck over the walker that had gotten in the way of their fist fight. (“You know what they call a group of crows? A murder. A murder! That’s a bad sign!” flailed Stiles in the corner of his mind). Derek chewed on the popcorn he’d snagged from the bag between them, watching the man critically from beneath his scowl.

Maybe it was because the guy was nicknamed Jesus and he’d had Laura’s stupid song going through his head _again_ , but Derek no longer had the impulse to beat his stupid face into the concrete. They didn’t trust one another, but they didn’t have to in order to share a bag of two year old popcorn.

_-Take second best-_

“Where you from?”

_-Put me to the test-_

“Originally, or what general direction am I travelling from?”

_-Things on your chest-_

“Both.”

_-You need to confess-_

“California. But I was with my sister in South America.”

_-I will deliver-_

“You came all the way from South America? Dude, how the hell are you alive?”

_-You know I’m a forgiver-_

“Where are _you_ from ‘Jesus’?”

_-Reach out and touch faith-_

“Grew up in Washington. Now though, I live in a place called Hilltop. Tall walls, good food, clean water. We could use a fighter like you.”

_-Reach out and touch faith…-_

“I’ll think about it.”

 

Derek went to Hilltop.

 

Jesus hadn’t returned. This was normal for Jesus, to be out scouting a few days at a time, but usually Derek was out scavenging with him having his back, not benched because he’d dislocated his stupid human shoulder. He was worried. No matter how deeply he scowled at Greggory the man couldn’t care less and just as Derek was storming to the gate with his rucksack over his shoulder, fully determined to go out and find Jesus himself, the tall wooden doors swung open.

- _Flesh and bone_ -

Jesus was there, leading a troupe of people. Unknown people. His feet stalled as he watched them, analysing, searching out the greatest threat as his eyes roamed over each figure. Sloped hunched shoulders, a gun that didn’t belong there, and a mop of black hair too long – he knew who that was, but it couldn’t be, it wasn’t because Stiles was in California, not Virginia, and he’d probably long since gotten himself killed, there was no way the kid was walking into Hilltop, not here, not now.

- _By the telephone_ -

Not Stiles looked up. Not Stiles’ mouth gaped just like it always had when faced with Derek. Not Stiles staggered towards him.

- _Lift up the receiver_ -

Derek moved in equal trepidation before lunging forward to catch Not Stiles before he collapsed into the dirt, and in his arms Derek knew – this was Stiles. This was Stiles Stilinski, and he was here now in Virginia. Stiles was here.

- _I’ll make you a believer-_

 

 _-Your own, personal, Jesus_ -

Stiles was here, Stiles was Derek’s personal Jesus, and his Messiah just rose from the dead.

**Author's Note:**

> Comment anything you'd like to see from either Derek or Stiles' story? Anywhere you'd want this to go? I'm open to all ideas, this crossover is my favourite playground.  
> I hope you all enjoyed, and if not tell me why and what you'd have rather seen go down.


End file.
